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to the roots and the trunk and limbs and facilitates pruning, spray- 
ing, gathering, ete. 
A clear understanding of the constitution of the bearing shoots 
_ of these trees will throw light on the best method of pruning them. 
On account of the larger size of the circulating channels in 
these trees, the sap tends to rush towards the extremities of the 
shoots much quicker than in other trees, and the buds that do not 
push and form shoots the first season are—unless the branch which 
carries them is cut back—lost, as, unlike most other fruit trees, 
they are not excited into growth by eutting back in subsequent 
seasons. This explains how it is that trees that have been neglected 
or wrongly pruned in their youth present long limbs denuded of 
young wood and bark, and look like skeleton trees, which soon perish 
after over-bearing themselves. 
In the peach, nectarine, and apricot the fruit branches are 
productions of the season’s growth, the fruit buds forming one 
season and blossoming the next. In the first two, more especially, 
the fruit is borne on wood of the previous season’s growth, and any 
limb or part of a limb destitute of such wood is sterile, so that the 
great object of the grower is to so prune the tree by cutting hard 
back a proportion of the lateral twigs that it is always covered with 
a regular and constant succession of annual bearing shoots. 
In the case of the peach and the nectarine wood that has borne 
fruit will bear no more. It should be cut out. 
The young shoot (one or two feet long) of the peach and the 
nectarine is furnished with a certain amount of wood buds and of 
fruit buds. There are one or more wood buds at the terminal 
points, fruit buds in the middle, and two or three wood buds at the 
base. If the branches are left untouched the fruit buds blossom 
and produce fruit, and the terminal shoots, which should carry the 
next season’s crop, grow thin and weakly, as the fruit below have 
absorbed most of the sap and dried up the twig, while the wood 
buds at the base fail to grow, leaving a length of barren, useless 
stick. 
By proper pruning, however, or shortening in, one-half or so 
of last year’s growth, outside as well as in the centre, the lower 
parts of some twigs are cut back to one or two basal buds and the 
other twigs only slightly trimmed, the shorter ones being left un- 
touched; still there may be too much bearing wood for the tree to 
carry and bring to full size and perfection, unless thinned out; the 
flow of sap is fully utilised by what is left of the young wood; 
the leaf buds at the base produce vigorous young shoots, which will 
keep the tree well supplied with bearing wood for the next season; 
the foliage will be more luxuriant, the fruit larger and more luscious. 
At the same time that the shoots are shortened in, those that have 
already borne fruit are cut out. Whenever practicable, leave for 
fruit the twig from the top bud of a two-eye spur, and shorten in 
for wood to two eyes the twig from the lower eye of that spur. 
